Whips and Monsters

A prominent Ivy League-educated law professor recently argued that "Many Democracies Are Floundering."* He cites as the cause "political fragmentation [: ] the dispersion of political power into so many different hands and centers of power." **

Interesting, but I think he has engaged in the classic error of fighting a land war in Asia ..., sorry, make that mistaking correlation for causation. His lead example is the delayed passage of the infrastructure bill and the uncertainty surrounding passage of any part let alone the entirety of the Build Back Better proposal. I would argue it is not the "internal division of the Democratic Party" that slowed passage of the infrastructure bill, and empowered Sen Manchin. Rather, it is the likes of Sen McConnell, who has welded his party into a monolith, and used that as a cudgel to famously if ineffectively drive the other party from being able to exercise power. It is not Cruz and AOC and the other pretend 'free agents' who block legislation and the other exercises of legislative power. It is the failure of compromise, indeed the wielding of a refusal to listen as a weapon. The Social Security Act of 1935, derided as 'socialism' even by some Democrats, passed the House 372 to 33 - the official US House account is wrong when they say that margin is 'attributable to the Democrats' overwhelming majority' - even counting Farmer-Labor and Progressive*** seats with the Dems, they had 345 votes, the GOP 89. For the SSA of 1935, the vote was not the result of party whipping. Flash forward to the 1960s, we see the same thing with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights of 1965. For all three bills, which became central pillars of American government, passage was secured not by party-line votes no matter how ably and firmly whipped, but by reaching across the center aisle, setting aside both partisan differences and recalcitrant mavericks.

But in 2009, McConnell placed as the overriding goal of the GOP the limitation of President Obama to one term, which the Senator saw as ruling out any cooperation on major legislation, most notably on the Affordable Care act - which was itself closely based on a proposal from the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank closely aligned with the GOP. Party-line votes surged to the fore, cross-aisle cooperation began to disappear.

As a local example in the current day here in Minnesota, the GOP has used a one-seat "majority" in the Senate to block popular legislation and disrupt the Governor's 'cabinet'.

I also compare Denmark, where I served 1988-1990, which famously hasn't had a single party majority government since 1901, to Jamaica (served 1994-1997), where no third party has gained so much as one parliamentary member since independence in 1963, despite some efforts to break with the functionally two-party system. Denmark is far more viable.

As currently practiced, the strongest position in the legislature is NOT the Speaker of the House, but the majority whip, the enforcer of party discipline. Ranked third, they escape public and media notice (quick! name the US Senate and House whips), but without their active concurrence and compliance, nothing gets done in legislative bodies tightly bound by inflexible party discipline.

I have some optimism that the party whip is fraying, and our long national nightmare of partisan BDSM may dissipate. Oddly, I take comfort in the vast partisan difference at the grassroots in response to the pandemic -- much like Dr Frankenstein, the GOP leadership may be losing control of the monster they created.

* Fascinatingly, that appears to be the title chosen by the NYT editor - the title appears as "Why So Many People Are Unhappy with Democracy" in the url - which retains the original title of documents if the poster is not careful in editing the url.

** As an aside, as a good professor will do, he footnotes his thesis of "political fragmentation" - but to his own dang article. ]

*** Those were genuine third parties, caucusing with the Democrats.

What was written as current affairs is now popular history and military sociology.

In March 1995, at what we now know to be the midpoint between the Cold War and the so-called Global War on Terror, military journalist Tom Ricks embedded himself in a platoon of recruits going through Marine Corps boot camp at the famed Parris Island. Making the Corps, Ricks' account of that experience, was published in the late summer of 1997, just as I enrolled – as a Foreign Service Officer – in the Marine Corps' Command and Staff College in Quantico. Like Ricks, in my ten years in the State Department (to that point), I had had frequent contact with Marines – the detachments that secured our embassies, and my Ambassador in Jamaica, who had been the first African-American to lead a Marine infantry unit in combat (in Vietnam), and was at that time a Reserve USMC Major General (two-star).

The bulk of the book is, properly enough, taken up with the literal trials and tribulations of the 63 men who seek to gain the title and dignity of being called “U.S. Marine,” which will only come after they complete the eleven week course. Ricks, much like the drill sergeants, focuses his attention on the stand-outs and wash-outs among the recruits. For the D.I.s, those in the middle will do ok without their attention. For Ricks, the ends of the bell curve provide better stories: “reformed” white supremacists and nominally criminal gang members from SE Washington DC are more interesting than fast food employees or even a washed up accountant. And it is interesting – but is it an authentic picture of the Marine recruit in the mid-1990s? Probably not.

Where the book really disappoints though is the penultimate chapter, Ricks' attempt to predict the coming role of the Marines and the US military. Having belabored the idea that there exists a deep and widening gap between the military generally and the Marines specifically and civilian culture at large, Ricks doubles down. Earlier, he noted that the skinhead and the gangbanger agreed that a “race war” was coming to America (and that Jews were at fault). In this latter chapter, he turns to experts with better credentials but the same bigotry to argue that as the military experiences the then-expected downsizing, and American culture is ravaged by the supposed acolytes of cultural Marxism, the Marines will be called on to maintain peace and order at home. Ricks is blind to oncoming rush of terrorism, even though al Qaeda had already bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and the USAF barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in 1996 (initially atributed to Hezbollah and its backer Iran), neither of which he mentions, and the Marines suffered 220 deaths in the 1983 Beirut terror bombing (which Ricks does mention).

In that chapter, Ricks worries about the increasing politicization of individual Marine and military officers, taking as his benchmark a mythical past in which US military officers were strictly apolitical, not even voting. The benchmark, the myth, studiously ignores the real history, which saw the former Commanding General of the U.S. Army George McClellan candidacy against his former Commander-in-Chief Lincoln in 1864, General Douglas MacArthur flirt with a run for President in 1952; the cigar-chomping, fire-bombing, warmongering General Curtis Lemay's run for Vice-President in 1968; and the similar role of Admiral James Stockdale in 1992.

Making the Corps is well-written, and Ricks had almost astonishing access to the boot camp experience. A very good effort for his first book-length essay. But in the end, this is descriptive, not analytical or incisive, and it remains a curio for the curious, easily laid aside and forgotten.

SCOTUS Risks Making Itself Irrelevant

The recent SCOTUS case arising out of the news Texas law is broader than the narrow if dreadfully important prohibition imposed by that law.

Roberts alludes to the central problem: The US Supreme Court (and its subordinate Federal courts) is nowhere explicitly authorized or directed to perform judicial review, and no US court is explicitly tasked with protecting the human rights of an individual. Judicial review, a court reviewing a law to see that it does not contravene the US Constitution, was assumed by SCOTUS in the case of Marbury v Madison (1803), on the basis of a fairly weak foundation. The 14th Amendment, the basis of so many rights advanced by SCOTUS starting in the 1950s, does not assign enforcement of its terms to any body whatsoever.

Consequently, SCOTUS has literally been all over the map on enforcement of the 14th Amendment, and the constitutional vagueness on the protection of human rights allowed the creation of "Originalism" in the 1980s to undermine those rights. There was a reason Bork was "Borked" and kept off the highest bench. But in the intervening 35 years, the defenders of human rights in this country did little to nothing to close that wide open gate, eroding Federal judicial review and allowing the return to these disUnited States where your rights depend on where you live.

Note: Judicial review and the duty of courts to protect human rights ARE explicitly enshrined in newer constitutions, such as that of Montenegro (2007, see Article 149), and the relevant treaties of the European Union .

The Big Lie

Jefferson Davis was captured this day, May 10, in 1865, a day after President Johnson declared an end to combat (and the confederacy). While already in 1866 the US House had voted overwhelmingly to indict Davis for treason, he was not so indicted until March 1868: after Davis had already bailed out and moved to Canada. Davis' lawyers argued the 14th Amendment, barring him from office for "insurrection or rebellion," meant that a new trial for treason was double jeopardy (!). Davis was included in the general pardon of December 1868. [The Federal prosecutor who wrote Davis' indictment merely substituted Davis' name for Burr's on Burr's 1807 treason indictment.]

A fervent racist, by 1873 Davis was a leading proponent of "The Lost Cause" and proclaimed that southerners were "cheated not conquered."

Full of it:

The RWNJs are running with a bogus story from the Daily Mail (UK) claiming that some plan from President Biden would mandate a 90% cut in red meat consumption, to about four pounds per person per annum.

DJTJ responded with "a hard NO," saying he "ate about four pounds of red meat yesterday." Well, we knew he is full of sh*t - and now we know why. (Red meat is leading cause of constipation.)

False Privacy:

"House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) repeatedly dodged Fox News anchor Chris Wallace’s pointed questions on Sunday about the top Republican’s Jan. 6 call with former President Donald Trump, insisting his conversations with the former president are a personal and private matter." - Daily Beast

Really? In the midst of an attack on the Capitol, you were having a "personal and private" conversation with the President*? Discussing your kids' birthday parties, no doubt. If a politician insists on privacy, they can go back to what is often called "private life" - leave office.

 !!!

“Along these lines, here is a nice breakfast story: Earlier in the fall, the journalist Kingsley Martin visited the massive Tilbury shelter in the East End, a margarine warehouse that nightly drew up to fourteen thousand people … [who] paid little attention to sanitation []. 'They urinate and defecate in every part of the building. The process is helped by the convenience of the margarine in cardboard cases which can be piled up into useful mounds behind which people can dig themselves in and sleep and defecate and urinate in comfort.' He did not know whether this margarine had then been distributed to food markets in the city [].” The Splendid and The Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson, p. 533.

 Fritz

In the early 1990s I was checking out at a Best Buy in Uptown Minneapolis. A distinguished older gentleman was ahead of me, wanted to pay by check. Cashier asked to see ID as the assistant manager rushes over, "Don't do that!" The gentleman laughs softly, pulls out his driver's license, the cashier make a note on the check. The man takes back his license, picks up his purchase and leaves.

Assistant manager to cashier: "Don't you know who that was?" Cashier, looking at check: "Walter Mondale. Why, who's that?"